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Input: Output:
0 Preview sa figure 2.34
You can choose to work in dot percentages or tonal values by clicking the small triangles.
Levels
Channel: RGB -
figure 2.33
When the Output Levels highlight is adjusted, the image regains the needed tonality. In this example, 1 did not need to adjust the Output Levels shadow. Adjusting the shadow will lighten the darkest areas of the image, which may be useful in other situations.
Levels
Channel: RGB -
Tip_
Option/Alt-click in the Curves grid to toggle between a 4x4 quarter tone and 10x10 increment grid. Click the icon at the bottom right of the Curves dialog box to toggle between larger and smaller sizes of the Curves dialog box.
The best aspect of Curves is the control you have over the many points of tonal information. With Curves, you can quickly enhance image contrast by applying a classic S-curve (described in the next section), or you can spend more time with the interface and use bump points to bring out selective tonal details, as we'll do in "Bringing Out Detail with Curves."
Improving Contrast with Curves
Figure 2.35 shows another family heirloom that has aged significantly. The image is flat, as seen in the lack of difference between the highlights in the woman's blouse and the shadow thrown by the horse. I used Curves to deepen the shadows, make the highlights brighter, and enhance the midtone contrast as shown in figure 2.36. When working with such flat originals, start by moving either the highlight or shadow point along the top or bottom of the curve to deepen the shadows or lighten the highlights and then adjust the midtones to refine the contrast.
(- ch2_curves_ride.jpg
1. Add a Curves adjustment layer.
2. This example has a lot of dark information, so 1 started by moving the shadow point along the bottom of the curve to the right. This deepens the shadows nicely, as seen in figure 2.37.
BEFORE
figure 2.35
mt figure 2.36 
figure 2.36 
figure 2.37
Deepening the shadows to make them look richer figure 2.37
Deepening the shadows to make them look richer
Move the white point along the top of the curve to make the dingy grays brighter, as seen in figure 2.38. Be careful not force them to pure white.
ii iput [210
figure 2.38
Brightening the highlights without forcing the whites to pure white
4. To improve the midtone contrast, place the mouse over a light area and Cmd/Ctrl-click to add a control point on the Curves graph. In this example, I clicked the rider's blouse and pressed the left arrow key twice to open up the highlights slightly as shown in figure 2.39.
; Options... Prevww figure 2.39
Subtly opening up the lighter tones
5. Cmd/Ctrl-click a dark area to add a control point on the Curves graph for the dark value. In this example, 1 used the woman's skirt and pressed the right arrow key twice to deepen the shadows ever so slightly, as shown in figure 2.40.
Oprioru .
Input ?f> Output figure 2.40
Subtly darkening the shadow values gives the image the final contrast improvement.
When using Curves, keep an eye on the Info and Histogram palettes as you are adjusting contrast and tonal values. You don't want to force the dark areas so far down that they become pure black. Conversely, you want to keep some details in your highlights, so don't force whites to 0%. The only values that should be completely white are specular highlights, such as reflections on chrome bumpers.
Here are some additional tips for using Curves:
• Be sure to view the Histogram palette when using before opening Curves to see the how the changes affect the histogram.
• Use the mouse to select a control point in the Curve and then use the arrow keys to make fine changes in position. When you use the Shift key, the arrow keys will make larger changes. Use Cmd-Tab/Ctrl-Tab to cycle from point to point on a curve.
• While in the Curves dialog box, shift click to add a Color Sampler to the Info palette.
• To remove a control point, simply click and drag it outside the grid, as if you were using tweezers to pluck the handle off the curve grid.
Caution
When using Curves to increase contrast, there is always a trade-off. Adding contrast in one area takes tonal information away from another. Therefore, making radical adjustments can lead to posterization in the flat areas of the curve. 
Input 1178 Output [215
Bringing Out Detail with Curves
As you can imagine, the original image in figure 2.41 is very important to the family of the man in the picture and even though it is faded, it is still salvageable as seen in figure 2.42. I used Curves to open up the midtones and highlights, deepen the shadows, and fine-tune the blacks and whites.
(- ch2Jeep.jpg figure 2.43
Mark important tonal areas with the Color Samplers 
figure 2.42
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figure 2.43
Mark important tonal areas with the Color Samplers figure 2.42
To monitor the tonal changes, add color samplers to the highlight, midtone, and shadow points. In this example, I clicked the white sign in the Jeep window for the highlight, the soldier's helmet and face for the midtone, and the area by the Jeep's wheel well as the shadow point. See iigure 2.43.
Add a Curves adjustment layer and Cmd/ Ctrl-click the highlight point, then use the up arrow key to lighten the image as seen in figure 2.44.
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figure 2.44
Making the highlights lighter opens up the entire image.
3. Cmd/Ctrl-click the midpoint point on the man's face. Use the up arrow key to lighten those tones as seen in figure 2.45. The helmet midtones need to be darker than the face midtones, so Cmd/Ctrl-click the helmet and use the down arrow key to create the curve seen in figure 2.46. 
Input 147 Owtpul 156
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figure 2.45
Lightening the face draws attention to it.
4. To enrich the shadows and give the image visual depth, Cmd/Ctrl-click the shadow point by the wheel and use the down arrow key to darken the shadow area. To make the shadows even gutsier, on the Curve grab the black point shadow handle and move it slightly to the right as seen in iigure 2.47.
By identifying the tonal values and enhancing them with Curves the image pops of the page while maintaining the character of a 60-year-old photograph. 
- -+M44
Input. Output: 129
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figure 2.46
Darf<ening the helmet midtones makes the lighter areas appear even brighter. 
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figure 2.47
Rich shadows serve as the visuttl foundation for the image.
WORKING WITH BLENDING MODES
With the exception of the Background layer, every Photoshop layer, including adjustment layers, supports blending modes, which influence how a layer interacts with the layers below it. This happens on a channel-by-channel basis so blending modes can in some instances simultaneously lighten and darken. For retouching work, blending modes simplify and speed up tonal correction, dust clean up, and blemish removal. The blending modes are arranged into functional groups, as labeled in figure 2.48 and reviewed in table 2.1.
table 2.1
Blending Modes 
Darken Multiply
Color Bum linear Bum
Lightening —
Conlrast Enhancement
Darken Multiply
Color Bum linear Bum
Lighten Screen Color Dodge linear Dodge
Overlay
Soft Light Hard Light Vivid Light Linear Light Pin Light Hard Mi*
Difference Exclusion
Saturation Color
LutTiinoiitv
The blending modes are organized into functional groups.
Normal
Combines the two sources based on opacity.
Normal
Combines the two sources based on opacity.
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Darkening |
The effect will be progressively |
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stronger as the tones become darker. |
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Darken |
Compares the two sources and replaces |
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light pixel values ivith dark. |
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Multiply |
Darkens the entire image and is |
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useful to add density to highlights and |
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midtones. It is especially useful for |
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overexposed or very light images. |
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Color Bum |
Results in a darker image with |
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increased contrast. |
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Linear Burn |
Strong combination of Multiply and |
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Color Bum; forces dark values to pure |
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black. |
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Lightening |
The effect will be progressively |
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stronger as the tones become |
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lighter. |
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Lighten |
The opposite of Darken, it compares |
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the two sources and replaces the darlter |
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pixels with lighter pixels. |
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Screen |
Lightens the entire image. Use it to |
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open up or lighten dark image areas |
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and to bring out toned information in |
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underexposed images. |
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Color Dodge |
Decreases contrast of areas lighter |
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than 50% gray while preserving black |
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values. |
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Linear Dodge |
Combination of Screen and Color |
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Dodge; forces light areas to pure white. |
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Contrast Qroup |
Used to boost image contrast. |
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Overlay |
Multiplies dark values and screens light |
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values, ivhich increases contrast but |
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without clipping to pure white or black. |
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Soft Light |
Combination of Dodge, which lightens |
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the light values, and Bum, which |
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darkens the dark values. Adds less |
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contrast than Overlay or Hard Light. |
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Hard Light |
Midtiplies the darks and screens the |
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light values and increases contrast |
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dramatically. |
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Vivid Light |
Lightens the values above 50% gray by |
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decreasing the contrast and darkens the |
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values below 50% gray by increasing |
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contrast. |
continues continues
table 2.1 (continued) Blending Modes
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Contrast Qroup |
(continued) |
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Linear Light |
Combines Linear Bum and Linear |
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Dodge; lightens the values above 50% |
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gray by increasing the brightness and |
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darkens the values below 50% gray by |
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decreasing brightness. |
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Pin Light |
Combines Darken and Lighten to |
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replace pixel values. Always very |
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contrasty; used for' special effects and, |
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less often, to create masks. |
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Hard Mix |
Lighter values lighten arid darker |
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values darken to the point of threshold |
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and extreme posterization. |
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Comparative |
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Difference |
Reveals identical pixel values as black, |
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similar values as dark, and opposite |
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values are inverted. |
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Exclusion |
Similar to Difference but with less |
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contrast. Blending with black produces |
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no change and white inverts the |
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compared values lo he rendered as |
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gray. |
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Image |
Only active in color mode images |
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Hue |
Combines the luminance and |
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saturation of the underlying layer with |
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the hue of the active layer. |
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Saturation |
Combines the luminance and hue of |
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the underlying layer with the saturation |
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of the active layer. |
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Color |
Reveals the color of the active layer |
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and maintains the luminance of the |
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Luminosity |
Is the opposite of Color and maintains |
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the luminosity information of the |
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With the following exercises, you'll work with the most important blending modes to solve tonal problems. The best thing about working with blending modes is that they are completely reversible, enabling you to experiment to achieve the desired result. To access the blending modes, use the Blend Mode menu in the Layers palette.
Using Multiply to Build Density
As soon as you see a very light or very faded image, you should be thinking Multiply. The Multiply blending mode works as though you are sandwiching two slides over one another. Imagine that you're standing in front of a window and have a slide in each hand. Now place the two slides over one another and look through the slides—the results will always be darker. By using the Multiply blending mode on a Levels or Curves adjustment layer, you are doubling the tonal density of the image. Figure 2.49 shows a charming family photo that is fading away. To restore it to the image in figure 2.50, we need to build up overall density to strengthen the image. 
- figure 2.50
Ch2 boardwalk.jpg
1. Add a Levels adjustment layer and, without changing any settings in Levels, click OK.
2. In the Layers palette, change the blending mode to Multiply. Figure 2.51 shows how the image becomes darker. 
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Setting an adjustment layer to Multiply automatically adds density.
3. In many cases, adding a Multiply Levels adjustment layer is enough to build up enough image density to create a pleasing image. In this example, I wanted to darken the image a bit more—the easiest way to do that is to duplicate the Levels layer and adjust the layer opacity as seen in figure 2.52.
Note_
Deciding which method to use—duplicating the adjustment layer, finessing the Levels sliders, or, in some cases, duplicating the adjustment layer and changing its blending mode is a matter of experimentation and experience. No one can look at an image and say, "I need to do A, B, and C and use these exact values." Keep in mind that the more you experiment with these techniques, the more experience you will gain and the more skills you'll have to improve images.
figure 2.52
Duplicating the adjustment layer doubles the effect, which you can refine by reducing the layer opacity.
Adding Contrast with Hard Light
Overlay, Soft Light, and Hard Light are great blending modes to add contrast to an image. In figure 2.53, the original image is very badly faded and the boy's face is barely recognizable. Using Levels adjustment layer with the Hard Light blending mode enhances this image quickly and easily (see figure 2.54).
@t>r Ch2_ponyride.jpg
1. Add a Levels adjustment layer and click OK when the Levels dialog box comes up.
2. When building contrast try Overlay, then Soft Light, and then Hard Light to see which one add the most contrast and improves the image the best.
3. In this example, Hard Light is a good start and duplicating the Hard Light layer creates a surprisingly good enhancement as figure 2.55 shows. 
Layers QwHHIth
Levels 1 copy 
Background
Levels 1 copy
Layers QwHHIth
Background  
- AFTER
Layers
Opacity flOO* B
Levels 1 copy
Levels 1
Background
Two Hard Light Levels layers dramatically imjrrove the image.
4. To bring out the little boy even more, I duplicated the Levels layer again. This made him look great but added too much contrast to the lower part of the image. To protect this area from the contrast enhancement, use a large, black, soft-edged brush to paint over the pony on the Levels layer mask, as seen in figure 2.56.
Lock _ jj 110CW6 ft 
figure 2.56
Lock _ jj 110CW6 ft 
figure 2.56
Painting with black conceals the contrast, and wherever the mask is white, the image is improved.
Of course, if you need to improve the shadow areas of an image, you can still make a luminosity selection and then choose Select > Inverse to make the darker areas the active area. Because the luminosity mask uses a range of selection values, some pixels are affected a great deal by your adjustment while neighboring pixels are affected less, so the adjusted pixels blend smoothly with the ones around them.
Take a look at the shot of St. Sergius Monastery, outside Moscow (figure 2.57). Due to the time of year and rainy weather, the sky is rather flat. A more appealing image has depth and richness like figure 2.58.
figure 2.57
Using Luminosity and Blending Modes to Add Visual Snap
One little-documented feature of Photoshop is the ability to make a selection based on the luminosity of the image. This is called "activating the luminosity mask," and creates a selection based on the luminosity value of each pixel. White areas are selected 100%, black areas are completely unselected, and pixels with intermediate luminosity levels are partially selected. Using the luminosity mask to select the brighter parts of your image lets you apply an adjustment to only those areas, so you can really boost the contrast in the image.
ch2_monastery.jpg
1. To boost the color and contrast of this image, first load a selection of the image's luminosity by Cmd/Ctrl-clicking the RGB icon in the Channels palette to create a selection based on the luminosity of each channel (see figure 2.59).
2. Duplicate the selected area by pressing Cmd/Ctrl-J. Note that the layer contents (see figure 2.60) are just the bright areas of the image and look transparent. 
BEFORE 
- figure 2.58
figure 2.59
Loading the image luminosity. 
figure 2.60
The isolated layer showing the areas selected by luminosity.
figure 2.61
The Soft Light blending mode improves the contrast of the highlights nicely.
Layer 1
Background Q
Loading the image luminosity.
figure 2.60
The isolated layer showing the areas selected by luminosity.
3. With a little experimentation, I found that changing the layer blending mode to Soft Light blending mode enhanced the bright areas, effectively giving only those areas a contrast boost, as shown in figure 2.61.
figure 2.61
The Soft Light blending mode improves the contrast of the highlights nicely.
figure 2.59
ENHANCING DETAIL WITH SCREEN MODE AND THE CHANNEL MIXER
Think of Screen blending mode as the reverse of Multiply. Instead of darkening everything, Screen lightens everything. Imagine a slide projected onto a screen. Now project another slide on top of it. The image will always be lighter.
This can be used to great advantage with very dark originals, such as the one in figure 2.62. The woman on the right is a Native American princess, so the photograph was very valuable to the owner. The paper base has yellowed and darkened so much it's hard to make out any detail at all. The Screen blending mode brings much of the contrast back to the image, as shown in figure 2.63. 
Soft light t) Opacity 1QQ% 
Soft light t) Opacity 1QQ%
Layer 1
Background Q
4- I duplicated the layer two more times with Ctrl/Cmd + J to get the additional contrast boost shown in the "after" figure, in figure 2.58.
When I face extreme tone or color problems, I always check the individual color channels to see if I can identify the problem. To see the channels, open the Channels palette and click each channel (red, green, or blue) or use Cmd/Ctrl with 1, 2, or 3 to see the red, green, and blue channels, respectively. Cmd/Ctrl-~) returns you to RGB with all channels displayed. In this example, the blue channel has practically no image information at ail, as you can see in figure 2.64. 
Red channel add a Channel Mixer adjustment layer. Channel Mixer uses sliders to blend each ot a source image's color channels into a new output channel.
2. The strong color cast in this image is not part of the essential image information, and by checking the Monochrome option in the Channel Mixer, you can quickly remove color problems.
3. Because the red and green channels have the best image information, move those sliders to the right to increase the amount that they are adding to the image. I used 90% red and 60% green, as shown in figure 2.65. Click OK.  
Channel Mixer
Red channel 
Source Channels Red; 190 ~]%
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Channel Mixer 
- Blue channel
figure 2.64
Looking at the individual channels can often help identify what is causing extreme problems.
To lighten this detail while maintaining the character of the original, use a Channel Mixer adjustment layer with the Screen blending mode.
1. Keeping in mind that the red and the green channel contain the best image information, figure 2.65
Adjusting the Channel Mixer sliders to create an image with the good channel information, while ignoring the severely damaged blue channel.
4. Change the blending mode of the Channel Mixer adjustment layer to Screen, which allows some of the original color character of the image to show through. (For additional information on working with the Channel Mixer, see Chapter 8, "Refining and Polishing the Image.")
ADJUSTMENT LAYERS FOR POWER USERS
You can move and share adjustment layers between documents by using the Move tool to drag them from one open document to another. The files don't have to be the same size or dimension—meaning you can make a tonal correction on one file and just drag the adjustment layer over to another file. Photoshop will apply the same improvement to the second file. Use this drag-and-drop technique when you have a number of similar corrections to make to similar originals.
Sharing Adjustment Layers
Adjustment layers can be dragged and dropped to other files that are in the same color mode to instantly apply the tone or color correction to the target file. On one project, I had to restore more than 100 images that were taken at the same time and stored together; consequently, they all had faded in a similar manner. After scanning in the originals, I opened one representative image and used a Curves adjustment layer to improve the contrast of one. Then 1 opened the other files and just dragged the initial adjustment layer over to each one, which applied that correction to all the subsequent files. Of course I looked at each image and tweaked the corrections where needed, but by using this technique 1 was done with the job in no time.
In the following example, the three images were flat and unappealing, as seen in figure 2.66. I wanted to quickly boost the contrast on all three to find the best image as shown in figure 2.67.
ch2 dark_angel_l.jpg ch2_dark_jingel_2.jpg ch2_dark_angel_3.jpg
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figure 2.66 figure 2.67
figure 2.66 figure 2.67
1. I opened one representative image and improved the contrast with Curves (see figure 2.68).
2. After clicking OK to the adjustment, I used the Move tool to drag the adjustment layer from the Layers palette onto the next two images one at a time.
Curves
Curves
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figure 2.68
orrectineone image.
COMBINING TONAL CORRECTIONS
So far, you've seen numerous examples of correcting tone or contrast problems using one or another type of adjustment layer, but you can expand your Photoshop repertoire by combining numerous types of adjustment layers. Here is an example that illustrates the application of several adjustment layers to restore tone and contrast to a very faded and discolored original (see figure 2.69) creating the rich image shown in figure 2.70. It also shows the flexibility in using adjustment layers. 
- figure 2.69
Often an image is so dark and discolored that 1 simply don't know which problem to take care of first. In this example, even though the image probably had a sepia tone, the passage of time has compressed the tonality of the original and added an unpleasant orange color cast. Try the following technique to clear up both problems with one adjustment.
Ch2_man_with_vest.jpg
When working with antique images, you may be faced with images that have a strong colorcast and exposure problems. To expand the overall tonality and to remove the strong colorcast, use a Levels adjustment layer and work on the individual color channels to clear up the colorcast in three very easy steps.
1. Create a new Levels adjustment layer.
2. Activate the red channel by using Cmd/Ctrl-1 and move the highlight levels slider to where the majority of the highlight information begins and the shadow slider to where the majority of the shadow information is (see figure 2.71).
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